By Staff Reporter |
Arizona’s top Democrats from Congress on down are coordinating to pass a ballot measure that would enshrine relaxed voter ID laws in the Arizona Constitution.
A coalition of top Democrats joined on a livestream earlier this week for a launch of the Protect the Vote Arizona Act political action committee: Reps. Greg Stanton (D-AZ-04), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ-03), and Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ-07); Secretary of State Adrian Fontes; Attorney General Kris Mayes; and the minority leaders for the Arizona House and Senate, Rep. Oscar De Los Santos (D-LD-11) and Sen. Priya Sundareshan (D-LD-18).
The Democrats styled the ballot measure in their public comments as focused primarily on keeping mail-in voting as an option in Arizona. However, most of the ballot measure focuses on undoing the strictness of voter ID laws and ensuring that stricter voting requirements may not come to pass.
The Protect the Vote Arizona Act would require the acceptance of any IDs with the photograph, name, and address of an individual — not just limited to any government-issued form of identification.
The act also prohibits limiting allowable forms of identification to photo IDs, and requires acceptance of IDs so long as election workers can’t determine “on its face” that the identification provided had expired.
The act would also require the acceptance of “any two forms of identification that bear the name and address of the elector.” The non-exhaustive examples of valid voter ID included utility bills or bank or credit union statements dated within ninety days of the election, or any mailing labeled “official election material.”
Even if an individual doesn’t provide valid identification, the law would require that individual be allowed to cast a provisional ballot regardless. According to the ballot measure, that provisional ballot wouldn’t count unless the elector provides any of the myriad forms of ID to their county elections officer within a certain time frame.
Beyond identification laws, the act would prohibit any policies or laws that would “burden” voting, not just those that restrict or curtail voting. One of those measures would concern mail-in ballots. The act proposes to enshrine mail-in ballots within the Arizona Constitution.
Ansari said in the livestream that Democrats need to gather 500,000 signatures by July 2 to get their constitutional measure on the ballot this November. The Protect the Vote Arizona website said a lower number will be needed: about 384,000 signatures.
Ansari estimated that they’ve already collected about 50,000 signatures in recent weeks.
During conversations on the ballot measure, Grijalva agreed with a claim that the SAVE Act and similar efforts to require voter ID were rooted in racist efforts to prevent non-whites from voting.
“We have to give people hope that there is a way out of this,” said Grijalva. “We know that our message is resonating with people.”
Other top Democrats on the livestream included Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Greg Casar (TX), Jasmine Crockett (TX), Maxwell Frost (FL), and Robert Garcia (CA).
The political action committee behind the ballot measure, Protect the Vote Arizona, claimed to have had no funding or expenditures since its launch in January through the end of March.
Key members behind the ballot measure are Maritza Miranda Saenz, a lobbyist with Lumen Strategies, and Dacey Montoya, Gov. Katie Hobbs’ treasurer and a leading dark money handler for Arizona Democrats (see: “The Money Wheel”).
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